For the Love of Money!

How much is marriage worth, in particular, a fraudulent one?

I came across this article on the unfolding of a marriage scam and couldn’t help but ask a few questions. The basic idea is that a ring of entrepreneurial Ghanaians were able to pull off an estimated 1,000 fake marriages, over four years.

I took special interest, having been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, but there was something else that caught my eye. It’s understandable that Ghanaians would pay $3,000 to gain US citizen, but who are the Americans that they are recruiting for 500 bucks to get married.

Given my recent experiences at the courthouse for my name change, you couldn’t pay me $500 to stand in line more than once at the courthouse. Not to mention the hassle and stigma related to having been married and divorced. A potential future spouse might learn something about your decision making capabilities based on your previous marriage. Additionally I’d be really concerned about financial liabilities of getting married. They could run up credit card debt and all sorts of fun misadventures. Can’t see how any of that is worth $500. It seems there are folks out there who might think otherwise.

I appears that some of those folks are from Home Depot. They had an inside guy to recruit potential spouses for $50 for each ‘spouse.’ I could be wrong, but for the risk I think you’d be making more money selling weed than spouses, and probably have more takers!

For the Love of Money!

Miel